Acalculia: The Relationship Between Numerical
Calculation and Languageby Jaecel Shah

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What is acalculia?

The inability to do simple
mathematics problems.

This includes the
simplest of mathematical operations:

quantity comparisons

addition

subtraction

multiplication

division

Acalculia was formally named in 1920 by Henschen (Cohen et
al., 1999).
Acalculia is derived from the Greek, "a" meaning "not" and the
Latin "calculare" meaning "to count"
(Psychology Wiki). Henschen hypothesized
that acalculia was due to impairments in multiple areas of the
brain. His initial hypothesis was close as there are many
numerical processing areas.

The level of acalculia differs in every diagnosed individual
and the reasoning behind the difference is still not completely
understood. A great example is a case described by Lampl et al.
in 1993, where they described a patient that was clearly
acalculic and was unable to perform all the basic mathematical
functions except subtraction. Therefore,
not every mathematical function has to be dysfunctional in order
for the individual to have acalculia.

It is important to note that acalculia is not the same thing
is dyscalculia. Dyscalculia is a developmental disorder
that generally occurs early in life. Acalculia can occur
at anytime in a lifetime and arises due to some sort of
neurological trauma. Sometimes the two can be confused for
one another given that a some of the calculation
deficits seen are common to both acalculia and dyscalculia